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Sentencing Law and Policy
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Even a volunteer can’t get executed because of Baze

By Douglas Berman

As covered by media links at How Appealing and this post at CDW, the Nevada Supreme Court prevented a condemned inmate who wished to be executed from being subject to lethal injection.  Here are details from this local news coverage:

Death row inmate William Castillo seemed “very disappointed” Monday night that the Nevada Supreme Court canceled his execution about 90 minutes before he was scheduled to have a lethal injection. “He asked if it was possible to get more medication to calm him,” Nevada Department of Corrections Director Howard Skolink said of Castillo’s reaction. “He wanted something to take the edge off.”

The court convened at 4 p.m. to hear arguments and about 7 p.m. stayed the execution and gave the American Civil Liberties Union and the state attorney general 20 days to file briefs regarding the ACLU’s last-minute request that the execution method is unconstitutional because the drugs masks the inmate’s reaction, denying news media the First Amendment right to report the actual effects of the injection.  The ACLU petition came on the heels of a U.S. Supreme Court review of the constitutionality of lethal injection methods in a Kentucky case.

Lee Rowland, the ACLU coordinator in Northern Nevada and the lawyer who argued the case, termed the decision “clearly correct legally and morally.”…

“The elderly relatives of the victims had hoped for closure, and they didn’t get it tonight,” Skolink, who told media of the court’s decision, said at the prison in Carson City. “The inmate had prepared himself for the execution, and now it will be at least 60 days before he’s going to know what happened to him.”

Castillo was sentenced to death for the tire-iron beating of Isabelle Berndt, 86, a teacher who lived in Las Vegas.  His female accomplice is serving a term of life with parole.  Two of Berndt’s elderly relatives had driven to the prison, were told of the cancellation and never went inside.  Skolink said Berndt’s family said they were going to ask the state supreme court and ACLU for their travel expenses for a “trip that need not have been made.”

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